02 · Cars
Driving a car on Bulgarian roads
Published · Updated · About 19 minutes of reading
Most of the practical questions for a car are ordinary: what to have with you, which general limit applies to the road you are on, and who has priority when the signs run out. Bulgaria drives on the right. A car is licence category B in the speed table published on the government information page on national traffic rules (opens in a new tab, outside bgtol).
What to carry
The same government page says a driver should carry a driving licence for the category, the vehicle registration certificate, and proof of compulsory motor third-party insurance. A roadworthiness document is also listed. Visitors need insurance that actually covers Bulgaria. A vignette is not insurance. When leaving the country, a Green Card is the document the page names for the insurance check at the border.
Number plates, lights, and glass have to be readable and working. A phone at the ear is not allowed; hands-free equipment is the exception the rules describe. Seat belts are required where the vehicle has them, and children need an appropriate restraint. The exact child thresholds should be read from the current text, because they are amended from time to time. The driver is expected to keep passengers belted as well.
If the car stops on the carriageway because it has broken down, the driver who gets out is expected to wear a reflective vest. Equipment such as a warning triangle belongs to the category rules. Check the current list for your vehicle rather than a forum summary. Emergency help is 112.
Four bands, then the sign
For a car the general limits on that government page are 50 km/h in a built-up area, 90 km/h outside one, 120 km/h on an express road, and 140 km/h on a motorway. The European Commission’s 2026 road-safety country overview also records 140 km/h as Bulgaria’s motorway maximum for passenger cars. It is one of the higher motorway limits in the European Union. It is still a maximum.
| Vehicle | Built-up | Outside | Express | Motorway |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motorcycle, category A | 50 | 80 | 90 | 100 |
| Car, category B | 50 | 90 | 120 | 140 |
| Categories C and D | 50 | 80 | 90 | 100 |
| Categories BE, CE, DE | 50 | 70 | 90 | 100 |
A residential area, signed as such, has its own limit of 20 km/h, and pedestrians may use the width of the street. That is easy to miss if you only remember the 50 of an ordinary town.
Choose a speed you can stop from. The government page’s own teaching notes point out that at 50 km/h a one-second reaction already covers about 14 metres before the brakes start, and that wet, mud, snow, and ice lengthen the braking distance several times over. Slow traffic keeps to the right. On a motorway, 140 is not a required pace, and it is a poor one in rain, in a queue, or beside roadworks.
Some motorway and express sections measure average speed between cameras, a system reported as expanding from 2025. The practical effect is simple: the signed limit applies along the section, not only as you pass a single post. Fines scale with how far over the limit you are, and they are steeper in built-up areas. The amounts change. Read them from the current Road Traffic Act rather than from a remembered table.
Priority, junctions, people
At a junction with no signs, give way to vehicles from your right. A priority road is signed. Stop and give-way signs mean what they mean everywhere in this sign system. At a roundabout, read the signs: entry is usually a give-way, and vehicles already circulating go first.
The order when instructions conflict is set out in the rules and repeated in the signs guide: a person directing traffic, then a portable sign standing in the carriageway, then the lights, then the fixed signs, then the markings. Temporary markings during works replace the permanent pattern.
Give way to pedestrians who are on a crossing, or who are waiting and signalling that they mean to cross. Do not pull onto a crossing if you would then have to stop on it. In Sofia and other cities, trams and buses have lanes and tracks you must not block. Rail vehicles are given way in the situations the rules describe. A bus lane is not a shortcut.
Overtaking is on the left, only when you can see far enough and can return without forcing the other driver to brake. It is forbidden into a blind distance, at an unsigned junction, at an open level crossing, and where a vehicle you would pass hides a pedestrian crossing. The vehicle being passed should not accelerate to stop you. On a two-lane road this is the manoeuvre that goes wrong when a motorway habit meets an ordinary road.
The alcohol limit described for drivers is 0.5 grams per litre, and the same page lists 0.5 for novice and professional drivers as well. The European Commission overview records the same figure. Below that number, judgement is already affected. The limit is not an invitation to drink and then drive. Driving after narcotics is prohibited. Do not hand the car to someone who is over the limit or who has no licence for it.
When the motorway ends
This is the transition the network page is about. Trakia can feel like a long, even road toward Burgas. Hemus cannot. When you leave a motorway for a first-class road, the general car limit falls to 90 outside towns, the junctions come back, and the oncoming lane is part of overtaking again. Fill the tank before a mountain section if you do not know the next station. A station shown on a map may be closed.
A car up to 3.5 tonnes needs an e-vignette for the paid network, tied to the plate, with no sticker to put on the glass. A trailer that takes the combination over 3.5 tonnes brings an extra vignette for the trailer. Motorcycles are treated differently. Both points are on the charges page. bgtol cannot sell or check either one.
In the cold season, tyres are a legal condition of using the road, not a suggestion. The window and the tread rule are in the winter guide.
Nothing here is advice for your car on a named day. The signed limit, the weather, and the current Act outrank this page.
Next: motorcycles, planning a drive, the catalogue.